


Toasting

by lunarlychallenged



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Katniss and Haymitch are stupid, Katniss and Peeta are engaged, everlark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 16:52:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14815193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarlychallenged/pseuds/lunarlychallenged
Summary: The bread for the Toasting is supposed to be made by the father of the bride.  Katniss cannot ask her own father, so she asks the next best person.





	Toasting

It was strange to plan a wedding now. As a child, Katniss had never thought much on who she would marry or when it would happen. She heard girls in her year talk about it sometimes. Some of it was when they giggled about boys that they liked, but other times they talked about the dresses they liked or the flowers they wanted. Katniss had never bothered with planning, since it had never occurred to her that she would need to think through what would be done.

Weddings happened in the square, with everybody in the District present. The bride wore a white dress, and the groom would wear the best clothes he could afford. A suit if he could, but more often than not he would be in whichever clothes were untouched by soot. They would swear themselves to one another, and afterwards there would be dancing and cake. Since she never thought she would be able to afford much, she had never dwelled much on it.

Now, however, she had to dwell on it a great deal. There was scarcely a square at all, so she and Peeta would make no vows there. There were only a handful of people to come. Katniss had never imagined her father walking her to the groom, since he had died before marriage was anything more than a vague understanding, but she had always assumed that her mother or Prim would be there to take her.

“What kind of cake do you want?” Peeta was holding a pencil and a scrap of paper.

“You can’t make your own wedding cake,” she said. It almost made her laugh to imagine it. Peeta, covered in flour and bits of frosting, frantically trying to brush his hair in time to meet her for their wedding.

“Well, who else is going to make it?” 

She considered. “I’ll bet Greasy Sae could whip up something interesting.”

“She would put wild dog in it and call it egg whites,” Peeta teased.

Katniss did laugh then, head thrown back. Peeta leaned over to press his lips against her neck, and she wrapped her arms around his neck to press her joy into him.

 

 

“We could have the ceremony in the Meadow,” he said.

Katniss hummed sleepily. They were curled up together on the couch, holding books that neither had been reading for some time.

“If you have any suggestions,” Peeta said suddenly, “you can say. It’s your wedding too.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “As long as you’re there, I don’t care what it’s like.”

“What,” he teased lightly. “You never imagined your wedding while you gutted rabbits in the woods?”

In the wedding she imagined before, Gale would be there to dance with her. She would work out some deal with the baker for a cake. Prim would cry, and Katniss supposed she might cry a little, too.

Maybe she had imagined it a little more than she wanted to admit. It was probably because of the faux engagement to Peeta, back before the second Games. In her own defense, it would be difficult to look at so many dresses and cakes and flowers without having secret favorites.

This was not the same Peeta she had planned to marry before, but she wasn't the same Katniss. This Peeta talked less, but everything he said meant more. His smile was never as broad, but it drew her smile out more than his old one did. That Peeta was going to be her husband by necessity. This one would be her husband because she wanted him to be.  
  
If it was easier to choose because she pictured Peeta enjoying them with her, nobody needed to know.

“I imagined Prim making a speech,” she finally said.

Peeta held her a little closer. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. The pain of losing Prim would never fade, but the truth of it was no longer a shock. “That was all that I cared about.”

“You could come up with some new things,” Peeta offered. “Whatever you want.”

Katniss considered. Losing District Twelve meant that they needed to come up with new traditions. She could make up something new. She could change something old. She could reevaluate the old things. Her life had changed a lot; she had lost things, gained things, and now was a time to see if any of it could be used in a wedding.

“I think I know what I want,” she said.

 

 

“Have you asked him yet?” Peeta’s question was casual, but she could hear that edge of excitement underneath.

“I haven't decided if I want him to do it yet,” she said airily.

“He would be honored,” he said. He was hanging up a shirt in his closet. Their closet, soon.

“That doesn't mean I would be honored,” Katniss muttered.

She had counted on them. She had counted on her family being there, so she had based her not-plans around their presence. Walking to the middle of the square was hardly important to her, but some small part of her was worried about the most important part - the toasting.

It was the one part of the wedding that she had never allowed herself to imagine, even now that she knew her wedding was truly coming. It was a silly little District Twelve tradition, but it held a lot of weight. The married couple would go home, make their first fire together, and toast bread. It was not just any bread, though. The father of the bride was supposed to make it, as a sort of symbol of passing her from one household to the other.

Katniss had not had a father for a very long time.

Peeta had offered to make it himself. “After all,” he had said, “you haven’t been a part of somebody else’s household for a long time, symbolically or not.”

She said no. It was partially because she didn't want him making his own toasting bread, even if it would be wonderful. He would have ignored that. Really, Katniss had a father figure in mind to make the bread.

She just had to ask him.

Peeta pressed his lips against her head, hand pressed against the small of her back. “If you want, I could ask him.”

“No.” It’s the father of the bride, not the groom. 

“The wedding is in a month,” Peeta said gently. Whether he was rushing her or telling her that she had time, Katniss was not sure. Either way, she did not need to be reminded. How the wedding could feel too far and too close all at once, she was not sure. In moments like this, though, when Peeta smelled like flour and ink and one of the peppermints he liked to suck on, it felt painfully far away.

 

 

Katniss gave the door three smart taps before barging in. “Haymitch!”

He did not look up from his place at the kitchen table, where he ate a bowl of stew. “What did we say about privacy?”

“I knocked.”

“The point of knocking is to give somebody the chance to turn you away, sweetheart,” he said. Even so, he did not send her away. “What do you want?”

“Do you know how to make bread?”

“With a baker for a fiance, I don’t see why you would need me to,” he said dryly.

“Peeta can’t make this bread,” Katniss said. She didn’t want to ask him. She wanted Haymitch to make the bread for her Toasting, but she did not want to ask him outright.

“If Peeta can’t, I definitely can’t,” Haymitch said. He leaned back into his food, a clear dismissal, but Katniss did not back down.

“We need to have a Toasting,” she said, changing tactics.

“Well spotted.”

“We need bread,” she said. She was now inching along the line of asking him outright, but she did not want to ask. He would make her, but that didn’t mean she had to make it easy.

“It is easiest to toast bread when you have bread, yes,” Haymitch agreed. “It’s a good thing you have a boy who knows how to make bread.”

“The father is supposed to make it.”

He looked up at her then, a little sad. “Nobody here has one of those. Not for a while.”

Very true. It had been years since any of them had had a father to turn to. It made her stomach flip to think about, but it also gave her the nerve to say what she needed. “I want you to make it.”

He blinked once, long and slow. “The father is supposed to make it,” he echoed.

She swallowed thickly. “Exactly.”

Haymitch looked at her. There was no answer, not right away. He stood and went to the liquor cabinet, and for one heart shattering second, Katniss thought that he wanted to drink until he forgot that she asked. Instead, he pulled out two glasses and filled each one halfway. He pushed on into her hand.

“Cheers, kid.” He raised his to her with a humorless smile. “I’ll make your bread.”

She downed her glass in one swallow. “Thanks, Haymitch.”

She was almost giddy with happiness when she told Peeta. “He said yes!”

Peeta grinned wolfishly. “Does this make Haymitch your father now? Papa Haymitch?”

She sneered at him, hoping he would ignore the way her lips curled up. Being Peeta, he did not. He came up with other potential names, from Pops to Daddy, until Katniss kissed his words away.

 

 

As it turned out, Haymitch could not make bread. It was flat and grainy. It was like biting into a stone.

“We could probably skip these on the lake,” Peeta said. The room was dark aside from the cheerfully flickering fire. He wore his best suit; it fit him wonderfully. Katniss loved seeing him in it, but she was rather looking forward to seeing him out of it more.

“They’re perfect,” she said. She ate the roll, though it hurt to swallow. She was married. Haymitch had kissed her cheek when he handed her the plate of rolls. They were awful, and Haymitch had made them. She would eat every single one.


End file.
